Friday, February 27, 2004

Tina and I went to see Duke play Valparaiso University (my alma matter) in basketball at Cameron last night.

Want to guess who won?

90-something to 50-something.

It was a slaughter. But we had fun there anyways! I received lots of stares as I was wearing a maroon Valpo sweatshirt. :) Next year they're playing at the United Center in Chicago. So Tina will look out of place in a Duke sweatshirt. Heh.

OK... time to get back to invitations. We have to address the INNER envelopes now, then put everything inside. Then lick, stick and send 'em away.

Monday, February 23, 2004

I was raised on McDonald's, Burger King and Domino's Pizza. I LOVE fast food... not just the fact that I think it tastes good to me (given my finiky food behavior), but that it's just easy to get and I don't have to prepare it.

But the truth is that I should eat healthier meals. And Tina's been encouraging me to cut back on the calories - since my lazy butt has been on a couch for a lot of the last few months. :)

So I went to the grocery store to find something that would be fairly quick and easy to prepare to encourage better eating habits. I found the Healthy Choice bowls in the freezer section - more specifically, a Chicken & Rice bowl which was just perfect. I bought them by the boatload. I LOVED these meals.

Well, one day, I could no longer find them in the closest grocery store. I had to go online to find where else they were stocked. Visiting about 10 other stores in the Raleigh area, I cleaned out every one I could find. But the very next time I went back, there weren't any in stock anywhere.

OK. Don't panic. Go to the customer service desk and ask them if they have any in the back. No, none in the back. Alright, can you special order them? Sure. No problem. How long til they arrive? No clue. Fine, I'll just check back later.

For three consecutive weeks, I would call to check to see if they were in. Nope. Never. Sorry. So at this point, I was getting REALLY worried, as I only had 1 or 2 left! I was going to have to eat out more often if I lost my bowls.

I decided to call the manufacturer. I wanted to know where they recommended that I get them. Wanna' guess what happened? Oh yeah.... they were DISCONTINUED!!! I couldn't believe it. Apparently, the Chicken & Rice bowl wasn't very popular. I was crushed. Because now I was FORCED to eat out again!

But as usual, Tina came to the rescue. She told me to go and pick something else out at the store. After several failed attempts, I think I might have found another meal I like. Woo hoo! Can you guys tell McDonald's that I won't be around much?

Saturday, February 21, 2004

(Note: This is a cross-over blogisode - meaning that it's the same post here as on the Wedblog with minor differences. Thanks for playing along.)

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!

I'm tired of addressing wedding invitations.

My fingers feel like they're going to fall off. But at least the outside envelopes are done, now to do the insides.

What's that you say? Why am I doing it by hand? What possessed me to grab a caligraphy pen and hand-write 200 or so invitations?

Well, I'm a sadist, really. And I'm cheap. An addressing service (yes, folks, there are people paid to address envelopes) will do it for about $1.50/envelope. This includes the outer envelope - the one with:

Mr. and Mrs. Full-first-name-middle-name-last-nameFully spelled out street addressFully spelled out city, state and zipcode

And the inner envelope:

First name of each adult on the first lineFirst name of each child on the second line

But as I'm only done with the outer envelopes, I still have to repeat the process with the inners. Sound simple? Sure. Simple for me? Of course not.

First we had to order the invitations - you can read about some of that adventure on our WedBlog. We paid a little extra so the envelopes would arrive sooner than everything else (with the idea being that I would actually get started addressing them sooner. I tried.

I say, "I tried," because my first few envelopes were done with a caligraphy marker... and without me knowing that I was supposed to be doing the full-name-no-abbreviation thing apparently required by formal southern tradition. OH, and I had wanted to do the caligraphy in purple. Apparently, only black is the allowed color. Oops.

So first was a trip to get black caligraphy markers. I came back, did a few envelopes and Tina then informed me (after an hour of addressing) that while these were fine for my friends, it wasn't going to work for her family. I realized that this meant that I was doing it wrong for everyone and was going to have to go back to the store.

See, the marker has a wide tip. I needed to see if there was a smaller version. I found two more black caligraphy markers and returned home to discover that nope, they're the same size. Which meant that I just wasn't going to be able to use markers for this. I was going to have to (insert dramatic pause here)... buy a real caligraphy pen. (I also had to get a "light box" - a little translucent table with a nightlight installed under it - so that I could project guidelines drawn on a piece of paper inserted into the envelopes. This way, it appears that I'm really great at making letters of equal height and in a straight line.)

Three guesses on who doesn't know the first thing about caligraphy pens but had to learn quickly while standing in the aisle of the store! :)

Yes, I found what I thought I wanted, went home and opened the box. These pens aren't the $2 bizillion pens that they used to use for nice writing. They're idiot-proof pens for people like me. I followed the directions to insert the ink cartridge, attach the right "nib" and tried to start the ink flow.

Hmmmm... no ink flowing. I wrote with a down-stroke, an up-stroke, a side-to-side stroke. No flow. I tried a damp paper towel to help siphon the ink down the nip (this is a real suggestion made on the instruction sheet... I didn't just make it up myself). No flow. I tried shaking the pen. No flow. Finally, I shook the pen in sharp downward motions (like I was 'resetting' a thermometer) and then used the paper towel method. Flow.

Now I started addressing. It's an amazing thing to see how small I can get the letters with a real pen.

And today, two weeks after I started (and LONG after the rest of the invitations arrived thus showing us that we wasted a bit of cash on the envelope rush order), the outer envelopes are complete. But only because I did 80 of them yesterday.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

I had an interesting day yesterday.

I love my car. What I love most is that my car has a bunch of cool gadgetry that makes my driving experience better than farfegnugen. But every once and awhile, some of that cool gadgetry goes Inspector Gadget on me.

The other day was my remote door locks. I have a nifty little feature called Passive Keyless Entry, PKE for short. PKE "senses" the presence of the keyfob and unlocks the door(s) when you approach and then locks the doors when you turn off the car, close the door and walk away.

The fob also has buttons for unlocking/locking the doors and popping the rear hatch. I realized things weren't working the day I turned off the car, pulled the keys out of the ignition and the doors locked me in and then the hatch popped open. Taking the car to the dealer, I found that I had a VERY expensive problem or an even MORE expensive alternative. So luckily for me, I just had the VERY expensive issue.

After a week or so, the car was ready to go. The keyfobs were reprogrammed to the car and the mechanic demonstrated that everything worked as it should... and that my rear hatch shouldn't pop as I'm driving down the highway. Of course, two days later, Tina needed to get in the passenger side of the car and we realized that the passenger door didn't unlock with the driver's door - which it used to do up to this point.

Tina feels like I'm not attentive as a result... and I'm pissed because I felt that the repair folks didn't do their job and I was taking the heat. I grabbed the car's manual, checked the appropriate pages, and saw how there were three PKE settings: Off, Driver's Door Only, Both Doors. I followed the instructions to change the settings to Both Doors. But it didn't work. Nor did it work the next dozen times I tried. Now you've got the background to understand what happened next.

As luck would have it, a lot of my interviewing trips were coming up, so I didn't have time to take it back to the dealer until yesterday. When I talked with the mechanic again, his response was "the car doesn't do that..." and "it's not something I can set up for you...". I pulled out the manual again, showed him where it said it was an easy setting to change.

After a half-hour of talking with other folks there who were supposedly "experts" on this particular vehicle, it was time to call Second Level Support from the Auto Manufacturer because no one there supposedly knew that the PKE system could unlock both doors. After ANOTHER half-hour, we found that there were a few possibilities... most likely it was a short between the ignition and the remote system receiver that was replaced during those expensive repairs. Of course, the only way to prove it was to rip open the dash board and test the wire. So I decided to live with the idea that the system only unlocks the one door for the moment.

But my favorite quote of the day came as I was getting back into the car to go home. The mechanic was smiling, joking about the extent to which they'd have to go to test that one piece of wire. And then, still smiling, he says "you're the only one who wants that setting... everyone else wants us to turn it off so that only one door unlocks...".

And I drove off... but wait a minute, didn't we start this adventure by him telling me that such a setting doesn't exist?

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Hunting for jobs is NOT fun. I don't care whether you're looking for an hourly position or a salaried job. Sending out resumes, making cold calls... whatever you're doing, rejections are derigeur. And they're going to come in by the boatload. If you want more, come get some from me. :)

Thursday, February 05, 2004

So I'm innocently sitting at my computer the other day and I get an e-mail from Tina. It is a challenge to me to take a "political candidate" test to see who matches up with my personal beliefs. [Quick background note: Tina's pretty far Republican. I'm not. She's also politically inclined. I'm not.]

She taunts me with the idea that Joe Lieberman is actually in the top three of her list. She's doing this to prove to me that I don't know what the various candidates really stand for - and she's right. My test is abysmal. Al Sharpton is the 100% match with my views. Scary. I guess I'll be voting "independent" come November.

In other news, we're going on a double-date with Carmen tomorrow night. She's taking US out with the gift certificate we got her as a Christmas present. That's pretty good return on investment - get to hang out with our friends AND get dinner for free. Cha-ching!

Oh, and house sale news... apparently the person who wants my house is a total home buying newbie. She's completely skittish and doesn't really want to negotiate. But what she has been told to get is $3,000 in closing costs. After about 5 back & forth offers and counteroffers, I finally gave an ultimatum tonight. I'm tired of dealing with this. If she doesn't want the house, that's fine. I'm tired of playing around with her. She is either going to have to pay for it or go find someplace for free (which is apparently what she feels she deserves as a new home buyer). Hehe.

And I got another job offer. In yet another town somewhere other than Raleigh. This is getting out of hand. Why can't someone let me stay here?

Monday, February 02, 2004

Not much happened today except that I made 100 phone calls for HOBY. Each school in North Carolina is invited to send one student to participate in this leadership weekend. But we don't hear from all of them, so we try to followup with them to see if they're going to send anyone. Thus the calls.

It took me three hours or so to do it. My fingers were sore from the dialing. And I got pretty tired of asking to speak with the guidance counselor, too.

And when I wasn't on the phone with a school, I was receiving calls about jobs and about selling my house. You'd better make an offer fast, or the house is going to be gone. :)

Sunday, February 01, 2004

I am all for going out and having a good time, but I'm stumped as to why it costs more to go out on a Friday night than a Sunday afternoon.

When I returned from Detroit on Friday night, I mentioned that I wanted to go to Kanki for dinner. It's the nicest Japanese Steak House in Raleigh - and dinner for two starts around $50. Tina was tired and I wasn't doing too well either (still in a suit from the interview). So we talked for a few moments and decided that a Sunday afternoon date would be better.

So we woke up this morning and planned out our date day. We would go to lunch at Kanki, hang around the mall (where the restaurant is) for a little while to kill some time, then go to a matinee showing of Big Fish.

By the end of the afternoon, we'd spent just over $40. Woo hoo! But I still don't understand why it was so much cheaper.

Lunch: $28.00Snacks purchased at Target rather than the theatre: $1.25Movie tickets: $11.00Total: $40.25

So our advice to people who want to do a lot with a little? Stay at home on Friday night, go out on Sunday afternoon. :)